OPINION: Artificial turf takes out student on campus

By Ana Vara
Assistant Editor
Published Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024

AstroTurf: 1. Me: 0.

It was a relatively calm Tuesday morning when I fell, almost completely flat on my face, into and by consequence of the school’s new installation of green and shiny new AstroTurf. Now, turf enthusiasts would tell you this wasn’t the case, that it’s all my fault and that I must’ve done it to myself by having stepped on the grass and all but I’m here to tell you that they’re wrong.

They’re wrong because this isn’t even AstroTurf, it’s actually artificial turf. No name brand turf, no; Texas A&M International University does not invest their money in the real stuff—the stuff called AstroTurf because it was first installed at the Houston Astros Astrodome in 1965. Their priority, it seems to me, is to get this stuff on as many surfaces in as little time as possible. They started with the patches of grass closest to the Sue & Radcliffe Killam Library, then the Dr. F.M. Canseco and the Anthony A. and Georgia Pellegrino halls, which is where I fell.

I’m not sure what the true intention of the turf is. They say it’s to conserve water but if this is the case, I suggest they use the now-saved funds to buy truckfuls of Band-Aids, as they will be needed. I’m not the first and I certainly won’t be the last to fall.

Even now, as I look onto the dappled light falling onto the artificial plastic turf, I can’t help but feel distanced, can’t help but think about the animals who won’t get to feel it under their paws the same way they did once as the artificial thing takes dominion over every true, green patch on campus.

I’m not sure whether they’re planning to get rid of the whole thing or just maximize cost efficiency as it regards the smaller patches but whatever the case, I can’t imagine it being a good thing. It finds itself injuring students whose feet ought not to adapt to the opposing grain the turf runs through.

It begs the question, surely. Why are students walking on the grass at all? But if the installation brings with it any knowledge, it’s that the desire paths we create will ricochet back into the artificial position the grass stands at—there will be no impact, by neither nature nor humans, on this new turf. It will be as though our steps were not even there at all.